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Thursday, May 24, 2007

EU Parliament Demanding EPO To Be Integrated Into European Community.

Heise Newsticker

reports [in German only, sorry] that the plenary of the European Parliament today has passed a

resolution on "Putting knowledge into practice: A broad-based innovation strategy for Europe (2006/2274(INI))". The motion is quite hostile towards the European Patent Organisation in its present form: The Parliament calls on the EU Commission to present, in cooperation with the Member States, a plan to integrate the European Patent Organisation into the Community, "in order to address concerns over democratic control and coherent Community policy on patent law".

Moreover, the paper states:

"[...] that reasonable and reliable copyright protection and patent systems are crucial elements in building an innovative knowledge-based economy and society; confirms the need to reform patent policy in Europe, recognizes, however, that patent policy reform is a long-term process; calls on the Commission to set up, in cooperation with the Member States, a group of experts, including also economic experts, to review the situation including the question of patentability; calls on the Commission and the EIF to examine the possibilities for providing small businesses with adequate financial support for their patent applications;[...]"

and

"[...] Calls on the Commission to draw up, in cooperation with the Member States, measures that are alternative and complementary to patent right legal protection measures which will defend inventors and emerging models of creation against blackmail and law abuse (such as FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) licensing systems); [...]"

In addition, measures are requested to ensure that common rules on patentability are appropriate to the conditions prevailing in each particular sector (without going into details of such undertaking).

And, the Commission and the Member States are asked to propose, in the context of the new Community patent, a procedure for eliminating trivial patents and sleeping patents filed for the sole purpose of obstruction. As there appears to be no realistic way to reach a Community patent in any foreseeable future it is unclear what the practical impact of such demand might be.

Also open standards are mentioned in their relation to the patent system:

"[...] Recalls the definition of open standards adopted by the Commission pursuant to which (i) the standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties; (ii) the standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge; (iii) the intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis. [...]"

There is also a rather mysterious Explanatory Statement saying, inter alia,

"[...] A new European strategy on patents is needed that will safeguard copyright but will not monopolise knowledge in the field of innovation or the scope for small and medium-sized enterprises in particular to make use of it. This strategy must review the existing patentability criteria established by the European Patents Convention of 1973 with a view to making them more precise and perhaps providing more details, thus leaving no scope for different legal interpretations, as happens at present in connection with the introduction and use of concepts such as the 'technical contribution', which are not defined in the Convention. The patent process itself needs to be simplified and speeded up. Perhaps it could be a two-stage process, whereby the expensive development work needed for obtaining a patent could take place once the proposed invention had found a sponsor, or if its originality was in doubt. The first phase of the patent process would be confined to registration of the idea, guaranteeing its author precedence, and to making his blueprint available for public inspection by those interested in its practical application. [...]"

Could please one of the parliamentarians voting in favour of the motion explain how on earth a patent system can safeguard copyright? And, a patent system that will not monopolise knowledge in the field of innovation sounds like a contradiction in itself.

[UPDATE 2007-05-25] Mr. Joff Wild of

IAM has given a

remarkable comment on all this on his

Blog:

"[...] I have been fiercely critical of European patent owners on many occasions for their failure to engage adequately with policy makers and the general public. That sentence shows what they are up against and just why they need to do more. The people who approved that are elected politicians who could, at some stage, have a direct say in Europe's patent future. They don't half need some educating and if they do not get it, all I know is that patent owners will end up wishing they had tried harder when they had the chance. [...]"

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" The people who approved that are elected politicians who could, at some stage, have a direct say in Europe's patent future."

A true democrat.

Your collegue Sharon Bowles watered the resolution down and used any tricks. It won't happen again.

# posted by Anonymous : 20 June, 2007 12:29